


The Money Shot

by feldman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Early Work, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-06-30
Updated: 2000-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:35:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've seen each other naked. They've seen each other dead. There has to be a reason why they haven't gone to bed. [Originally posted to Scullyfic and Gossamer in 2000]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Money Shot

_"She is watchin' the detectives_  
When they shoot shoot shoot shoot"  
-Elvis Costello

 

Scully had been dreaming a lot lately about sex. Intercourse, coitus, congress, a good long slow hard fuck.

Now, even though her lifestyle was a solitary one as far as romantic attachments were concerned, Scully was not one to ignore her physical needs. She treated herself to luxurious toiletries and fine bed linens. She did not deny herself the sensual pleasures of food or wine. She even brought variety into the bedroom on occasion, even if she was the only one there to appreciate it. You can't be everything to everyone, but Scully at least tried to be most things to herself. Recently, apparently, it was obviously not enough. Perhaps she had  
gotten into a rut. Perhaps this mid-thirties sexual peak nonsense was more than a myth. Perhaps it was this case.

Considering the unhappy fact that her stint with the Domestic Terrorism Unit had cost her three pairs of shoes and a favorite jacket, this case was so far her favorite: a low key bomber who only seemed out to inflict a little property damage. They had been brought onto the team rather late in the game, after the fourth bomb was found unexploded. Someone had decided that Mulder's special touch was called for.

~*~

Mulder had assumed his casual diplomat tone, "I'm flattered that you brought us all the way out here from our sold-out world tour of the sticks, grateful actually, but it looks like things are well in hand. We'd be glad to help with the legwork, but I'm not sure why you've asked specifically for us."

Special Agent Graver spoke as if constantly lampooning an old professor, grandiose yet self-mocking, "Well, Agent Mulder, we ahh, well, we figured that you might be uniquely qualified to help us figure this guy out, what with your profiling skills and ahh," SA Graver shrugged his massive shoulders and proffered a folder, "Here."

Scully opened it and paused at the first photo, "Hmm,"

"That's the last one, we found it two days ago. A very simple but quite destructive device, our team disabled it as soon as it was found."

"This isn't plastique, is it?" she half closed the file as Mulder leaned over to look.

"Ahh, no. The outside shell is made from colored Fimo, a type of craft polymer which is hardened by baking. We'd identified the material from shards collected at the first site. The wiring and explosive material were layered inside the device and the detonator was housed in the, ahh, scrotum part of it."

Mulder grabbed the file out of her hands, shucked the manila folder like so much shell and began to chew over the evidence.

SA Graver rose and gestured to the tiny espresso machine perched atop his filing cabinet, "Coffee?"

Scully nodded, intrigued by his huge hands manipulating the demitasse cups and spoons.

~*~

Mulder was convinced that the only real deviation from the standard bomber profile was the addition of artistic and/or sexual frustration, which may be the source of the bomber's destructive agenda. Perhaps a severe lack of social skills or a disfiguring injury, although the precipitating event may have been ten to fifteen years previous to  
when the bombing began. The bomber seemed to go out of his way to inflict only property damage, a pattern that may or may not continue, but which suggested that the bomber would likely have no prior arrests and therefore no prints on file.

SA Graver was unimpressed, "But what about the, well the distinct nature of the device?" He gestured to the photos that he had tacked back onto the corkboard behind him.

"A basic primate gesture; any dominant primate will mount a subordinate one. No penetration, just a few quick thrusts like a kiss hello. The original 'fuck you', so to speak. Bombers are classically passive aggressive, like the guy who keys your car in the parking lot. He may be angry about his sexuality or lack thereof."

SA Graver sipped noncommittally at his espresso.

Scully set cup onto saucer, "Can I look at the actual device?"

~*~

The lighting in the property room was too blue, it washed out the skin tones and made the purple blush of the tip look sad and sallow. Scully was even more impressed with the workmanship in person, in fact, it was too good.

"Gentlemen, I think this may've been done from a cast."

SA Graver folded his hands, and cleared his throat with a neck-stretching twist of the head, "What makes you say that?"

"Look here, there's a clear indication of a circumcision scar, yet there's been no effort to replicate the change in skin tone that often occurs between the scar and the glans."

"Penis critique, Scully?"

"It just seems that if the bomber were going for realism, that's a pretty obvious gaff. If he was working from a live model cast-most likely himself-he'd take the opportunity to correct any perceived flaws."

Mulder nodded, "Perfectionism. I should have seen it in the way the wiring was done to follow the veins."

~*~

Special Agent Graver dispatched them to Detroit to follow up a lead on a product called Jell-O Genitals, a kit with which one could make a food-safe Jell-O mold of one's genitalia, and which Mulder had 'once saw an ad for'. Graver had congratulated Mulder's unique spin on the case, although he was quick to point out that her own astute observations  
had been elemental as well. The feeling that this was some preposterous joke being played out on them had disappeared when their flight from Reagan to Detroit Metro had been booked.

Nobody goes that far for a gag.

Right?

~*~

 _"Baby got goin' on a southern train, you know_  
Fired up pistons drivin' below  
And the whole vibration, seat upholstery  
Silky underwear, oh conductor let's roll!"  
-Liz Phair

 

In REM sleep the voluntary muscles exhibit complete atonia; the body lays paralyzed, but the activity of the brain is much closer to someone awake than asleep...

Scully had wanted a change of scenery, and Missy had been deep in her feng shui phase. It had taken most of the afternoon to rearrange the furniture in her apartment, two small women shoving each piece with sheer force of will. Really, Mulder should have tutored under Missy, since she'd couched each suggestion in terms of utilizing space or improving the traffic flow pattern. It was only when Scully was calling in the pizza order that she saw the big sister smirk, the one that told her that yes, we've not only created a nice space for conversation in this living room, but also moved your couch off of the dragon. She'd even tried to feng shui Mulder, "This isn't a slam on your job, but I think that man's a mirrored ceiling and five padded walls."

In retrospect, she shouldn't have told Missy about that videotape he'd left in the vcr.

Dreaming the memory took mere seconds, a cleansing of the palate before richer, more luscious fare was served. In retrospect, she shouldn't have watched that videotape left in the vcr.

~*~

Scully came awake suddenly, just in time to see a thirty foot Uniroyal Nail Resistant Tire (complete with seven foot nail, rampant) pass by on the right, though it didn't fully register through the post-nap disorientation. She often had erotic dreams, but rarely on-duty. They needed to finish this case soon. In the side mirror she saw that her face was still flushed, and she glanced at Mulder to make sure she hadn't been caught. Oh look, she caught him.

Mulder had a thumb crooked into his right nostril. Scully watched as he expertly flicked the detritus out the window and proceeded to the left nostril, fingers fanned out and pinky cocked like he was taking tea.

"Admirable technique--"

Mulder very nearly hid the startle by changing lanes, muttering to himself about potholes.

"--the use of the thumb creates plausible deniability if you're caught."

"I had an itch."

"Halfway to your brain?"

"Don't take your nose envy out on me."

Her eyebrows were untranslatable.

She turned her eyes to the road and ignored the half-remembered flashes of being pressed and thrust against a soft white wall, slicked with sweat, his scent penetrating her  
skin like heat, rust and chestnut hair blending in reflection above. She wasn't really attracted to him, not really; not after he'd opened his mouth. But she couldn't help but perceive him as a sexual being, possessing that specific thrilling menace of 'perfectly able to fuck you'. She didn't breath through her nose when she was too close to him, she didn't want to take in his scent. When she was cooped up in the car with him, she tried to let it pass into and out of her lungs without saturating any nerve endings in her nose or her brain, she tried to think of it as something to be endured, like corpse smell.

She dialed up the AC.

~*~

Their first interview was with Kermit Kaydaug; respected member of the business community, volunteer girls' high school tennis coach, and on the side, the most successful Midwest mail-order distributor of Jell-O Genitals.

He owned a hobby store, and his driver's license picture showed a cheerful, well-cushioned face that was topped with a brush cut and devolved into a dewlap below the jaw. When they pulled into the lot, they could see him through the windows of the store. He was a huge man, in the way that the King of Tonga is huge, in voluminous sky blue shorts and tee shirt accessorized with a candy necklace. He moved with an immense grace, looking as if the QEII were docking behind the counter.

Scully thought of hippos running underwater, balletic and inevitable.

Mulder muttered under his breath as she passed him through the door he held open, "It's like the end of 'Ghostbusters', only Ray Stantz has just thought of a chubby baby."

Scully ignored him and approached the counter. "Mister Kaydaug? We're from the FBI, we're here to ask you a few questions."

"I have answers. Bismarck, North Dakota. Three fish. And yes, you guys *will* rot in hell for framing Leonard Peltier."

She doggedly continued, "Mister Kaydaug, it's about your mail order Jell-O mold business. We need to ask you some questions about some of your recent customers."

"I extend complete anonymity to all of my customers who pay for it."

"And those who don't..." She played the straight man to Mulder so often that she walked right into it, really.

"We make arrangements. That's a separate business."

Since the standing arrangement between them was that Mulder dealt with the smartasses, Scully backed away while he took over the interview. If Mr. Kaydaug had started to cry, then Scully would have tag-teamed back in. Since it looked like he still had happy baby face, she was spared. Peering through the window that separated the hobby store from a large gaming room, sparsely populated with pre-teens and drifters at this time of day, she listened.

"HAT!!"

A boy of about thirteen slouched in from the back room, his lumpy hat and lumpy physique combining to give the illusion of the sorrowful lovechild of Gilligan and the Skipper.

"Hat, go get me my blue disk file."

From underneath the hat came a mutter, "But you said I had to sort the cans and clean the bathrooms."

"And now you're getting me the blue disk file."

"So then I don't have to clean the bathrooms?"

"What, are you union? Go on already."

Hat trudged into the back once more and the interview recommenced.

Scully inspected a poster displaying some thirty-odd extremely cute cartoon characters, apparently the arsenal in some card game for eight-year-olds. Each character was labeled in Japanese kanji as well as English. She especially liked 'Raticate', which despite it's hairless tail and bared fangs was cute as hell. There was only one other person in the store. Scully assumed that he worked there, as he was misting down a creepy little green parrot in a cage by the window, "Excuse me,"

The tall blond man wore a beret with a jaunty little 'drug me' pin, "Can I help you?" He had a caustic chipperness to him, like he would have been just as happy to bury her as help her, which ever was quicker.

She gestured to the poster and the packs of cards, "I was wondering what 'Pokemon' is."

He knuckled his glasses back up his nose and sighed, "It's what eight-year-olds are doing these days instead of playing doctor." He flashed her a brilliant fake smile with a tip of the head.

~*~

"If ever a business suit held a secret," Mr. Kaydaug nodded sagely, dewlap swaying hypnotically as he made a copy of his customer list disk.

Mulder bobbed his head over the counter, "Excuse me?"

"I'll bet she even has you fooled, with that stiff 'n' serious attitude. High kink." He nodded again, eyes narrowing, "Oh yeah, she's high kink."

Mulder glanced back at Scully, who seemed to be making one of the employees nervous with her stare, "Trust me, she's Holly Hobby at heart."

The large man maintained his deliberate certainty, chuckling, "Holly Hobby with a strap-on, maybe."

"Mister Kaydaug, I think your first impression is misleading you. Her place is bursting with pastels and floral prints. She lives in the one apartment in the world with a cheery kitchen."

"Did you check all the drawers? Or just until you found the panties?"

Strained silence.

Scully wandered back to her partner in time to see him grab a disk from Mr. Kaydaug's chubby fingers.

"You've got a pair, don't you? Just admit it."

He was utterly casual as he pulled out his card and laid it on the counter. "Call if you have any info."

As she followed Mulder out, she faintly heard the blond man comment, "Hey Kermit, is it just me, or did he kinda look like a Jewish Corey Hart?"

~*~

_"Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your  
head, remember that?"_

_"That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me."_  
-"Ghostbusters"

 

It was forty five minutes before Scully had cracked Kaydaug's filing system, only mildly annoyed that Mulder would've realized the trick to it in minutes. There was no filing system. She proceeded to organize the data into some semblance of order so that it could be smelted for leads. Mulder was out doing more interviews to get a sense of Mr. Kaydaug, whether he might be a good prospect for suspect. Scully felt that Kaydaug could never have done the molds on himself, due to physical constraints. The candy necklace was disturbing, but nothing they could actually charge him with.

Kaydaug's business files had yielded five good leads, which could be checked further next morning. She'd already read through the latest JAMA on the plane, so she sprawled on the motel bed and scanned the free cable while waiting for her delivery Thai. She tried not to think about how desperate it would be to whack off in this awful little room. Frustrated yes, but not immune to ambience. What did the tv offer to distract her...ahhh, the 'Real Sex' series on HBO.

At least it was ending. She hated the 'Real Sex' series, full of tattooed people having sex in pretentious little ways. They should be grateful they're getting it at all, some of them. She'd had more attempts on her life since she got her tattoo than attempts to get into her pants. Come to think of it, lately those two things seemed to only come in matched sets, the salt and pepper of her daily life.

The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that whacking off would be striking a blow against those unseen forces that conspired to make waste of her life and her work; God she must be going through another puberty to be rationalizing this way. Really, this room was way too ugly to get naked in and that's that. Your food is almost here. Don't even think about the showerhead at home.

Scully made sure her pants were buttoned before she answered the knock, but Mulder's eyes were unfocused as he inhaled, "Spicy. Thai. Satay Chicken?"

"Maybe." Perhaps a thorough picking is just part of the daily care of such a nose.

Mulder followed her into her motel room, loosening his tie and falling into the rickety chair by the rickety table, fingers shoved into his eyes and pressing at the bridge of his nose. "I think Kaydaug's clean."

"Not behind his knees. I don't think he can reach there."

The fingers stopped, "I'll forget I heard that if there's Satay Chicken."

"Deal." Scully dug around the rickety table for the peanut sauce, but not soon enough to miss Mulder neatly tearing the meat off the wooden stick with his teeth. Ick-ick-ick-ick... "Find out anything interesting?"

"Mister Kaydaug's nickname is 'Waders'."

"Waders? Like you'd wear flyfishing?"

"Yeah."

She sighed, "Why 'Waders'?"

"Cause that way you can tuck the back legs of the sheep in and they can't get away."

"You can't be serious Mulder," Scully sipped incredulously from her ginger ale, "you don't need candy necklaces for sheep."

That earned her a look from beneath his brow. They ate quietly for a pace.

"You know why Will Kellogg invented Corn Flakes?" He began casually.

She replied from around a rather mouth-filling piece of broccoli, "Hmmm?"

"The blandness would keep the kinder from self-pollution. The theory was that spicy foods were overly stimulating to the nervous system and likely to cause undue arousal. Such as Thai. Or that nuclear ginger ale you're drinking, that would definitely rust the chastity belt through."

He knows nothing. She chewed, swallowed, and chased it down with the ginger ale which burned in her nose pleasantly.

"Then again, Will Kellogg also believed in coffee enemas-"

"Do you have a point?" She clipped a piece of bamboo shoot between her chopsticks.

"Not really. Just free associating. I can smell the pepper flakes in your veggie thing from over here is all."

"Right."

"So what's on the boob-tube?"

"'Orlando'. The part with the boobs was earlier."

An "Ahh," of regret. "So what would you do if you woke up and were the opposite sex?"

She was more surprised that Mulder had actually read or seen Orlando than by the question, "Oh I don't know. Probably write my name in the snow."

"That's it?"

She pondered while she chewed, then nodded.

"Somehow I actually can picture Special Agent Scully, M.D., pissing in the snow like a stray dog."

"Such a poet." She finished her ginger ale and let out a burp to make her brothers jealous. She'd always put them to shame in that department, "Pardon."

Mulder nodded absently.

"Mulder, what would you do if you woke up female?"

"Easy. Multiple orgasms, twenty-four seven."

~*~ 

_"If the words unspoken_  
Get stuck in your throat,  
Send a treasure token, token,  
Write it on a pound note, pound note"  
-Adam  & the Ants

 

Mulder was a gentleman. He had never gone through his partner's personal belongings, with the exception of the few times he'd had to bring clean clothes for her to check out of the hospital. Even then, he had been quick and professional about it, going straight to the drawers she'd specified and pulling out the first item he'd laid a hand on in each. Well, the first thing that would match and looked comfortable. A person needs all the dignity they can get on that obligatory wheelchair ride out the hospital doors, after all. Okay, so some of the drawers were pulled out a lot farther than absolutely necessary, but as a connoisseur of lingerie he'd tried to put together an appealing ensemble. No need to look like he'd just grabbed a fistful of laundry. Kaydaug was wrong about that part; he hadn't felt the need for a souvenir from a place he'd never been.

It was the pair by the tub that he'd found himself unable to resist.

He'd been driving for hours on coffee and mild guilt, having dragged them both across several state lines pursuing an obviously lame but nonetheless intriguing waste of time case. It was two in the morning when he pulled up to her building, but he followed her up to her apartment because if he didn't unload the three gallons of recycled coffee residing in his bladder, he'd certainly start to cry before he'd even left her neighborhood.

So he's standing there taking a very satisfying, well-deserved piss when he spots them. Laying against one clawed foot of the tub where they'd apparently been thrown, presumably at bath time. There was no thought process. He mechanically shook off, flushed, bent down, balled the soft plum colored cotton in his hand and pocketed them. He opened the bathroom door to see Scully's car-nap face, an imprint from the door marking a red diagonal line down her cheek. She was close to a pout.

"I thought you'd never finish." The brow furrowed and suspicion dawned. "But I didn't hear you wash your hands."

"That's okay, your bathroom looked clean enough."

"Fine. But when you leave, I'd appreciate it if you'd open the door with your feet."

"Will do."

~*~

 _"Bottles and cans,_  
Just clap your hands,  
Just clap your hands."  
\--Beck

The bad news was that although Domestic Terrorism almost never required autopsies, there was a corpse waiting for Scully when they checked in the next morning. Apparently "Hat" had dropped dead late last evening during the course of sorting cans for deposit; one of the other employees had discovered the body while kicking people out before close. The good news was that the Wayne County Morgue was a typical large metropolitan facility. Dingy, underfunded, often overflowing with a backlog of bodies, but fully equipped with well-trained dieners.

The diener assisted the pathologist, another pair of eyes and hands and arms upon whom the nastier jobs could appropriately be shirked, such as rinsing out the intestines. When  
Scully arrived, the body was already arranged on the table, with a block under it between the scapulae so that the arms fell to the sides and the chest was fully exposed.

Scully knew she was going to enjoy this one.

She introduced herself to the young black man waiting for her, shaking his hand. Russell was tall and slim, with a nice collection of fat braids pulled back in a thick blue rubber band and a beautiful nose, low and wide as a manta ray skimming the seafloor. His voice was tenor and smooth.

"Dr. Scully, I would usually have started by now so that you could jump right in, but since this is for a federal investigation, I didn't want to presume."

"I appreciate that, Russell. Let me suit up and then we can start with the surface examination."

Russell was well-practiced and thorough, and didn't bat an eyelash when she pulled out her own long sharp breadknife. He was pre-med at Wayne State, and expressed great interest in her technique.

"You're used to doing them solo, aren't you?" Russell asked, tsking and taking the chalk from her fingers.

More than you know, Russell. "It just takes a little longer. Moving them is really the hardest part, but once I began weight training it got a lot easier."

"I'll bet," Russell scraped the chalk against the tray to remove the outer surface which was too soaked with blood to write with, and recorded the weights of the organs as she laid them in turn on the scale. Scully would have to remember that; she usually broke the piece to expose the dry center and wrote with that. During that case in Texas, she'd run out of breakable pieces and had been reduced to smashing them with the handle of her breadknife and using the fragments.

She was finishing up the last tissue samples when her concentration was broken by that too familiar low nasally voice too close to her left ear.

"Do-do-do/We met/do-do-do/Last night/do-do-do/Makin' love by the refrigerator light--"

She put down her breadknife and eyed Mulder flatly, "What is that, Robert Goulet?"

"Wayne Newton, actually."

"Thanks a lot, man." Russell spoke over his shoulder as he capped a large jar of formalin in which the brain was suspended on a string, "Now I'm gonna be humming that all day."

"Hey," Mulder gestured with the forefinger of his coffee cup hand. "It's not like it'll put off the customers."

"Sure as hell put off my girlfriend, though."

Mulder shrugged. "I take it by the morguesbord that you're almost through. Any idea what killed this kid?"

"I'll have to wait for the toxicology work-up before I finish my report, but I'd say ingestion of a large quantity of poison."

Mulder sniffed, then nodded to himself, "Floor wax stripper."

"Floor wax stripper?"

"Apparently the store had plans to open a snack bar. Due to a delay, the equipment was kept in the storage room, along with bottles of slurpy syrup, cleaning supplies, and an unplugged freezer full of bloated packages of cookie dough. General consensus among the employees is that Hat was helping himself to some slurpy but the heartbreak of idiocy intervened."

Russell shook his head, "Another fine product of the downriver school systems."

"Downriver?" Mulder inquired.

"Yeah, the scenic trailer-monkey suburbs jammed between Southeast Detroit and cow-tipping Oh-Hi-Oh. The kind of place where the kids can't even spell KKK."

"Oh. Is this why Ted Nugent has his own morning show?"

Scully brought the conversation back on topic, "We still haven't ruled out the possibility that this boy was intentionally poisoned."

"Perhaps. But why? I doubt his co-workers are involved in anything heavier than shady business practices, and it's been established that this was the kind of kitty who'd lick antifreeze off the driveway."

Scully sighed. Another morning wasted disassembling a body of non-evidence.

Mulder tugged at a clean patch of surgical gown sleeve. "Come on, let's get some lunch before we interview the hot prospects of the day."

~*~

The Thanos Grill was just getting over the lunch rush, and they were seated right away in the loitering old men section. "So who's our first hot prospect?"

Mulder slid a slim dossier across the table which the waitress pinned down with two disturbingly large gyros. "One Wally Vincent, twenty-six-year old college dropout and factory laborer. He has connections to all four of the victims."

"Considering that the victims are Detroit Edison, Henry Ford Community College, Time Warner Cable and the Tutti-Frutti Ice-Cream Truck Fleet, I think about 25% of the Metro Detroit area are connected to most if not all of the victims." Scully punctuated her statement with a crunch of her dill pickle. Mulder had missed a spot shaving, which moved as his  
jaw muscle flexed. "Is your gyro good?"

He nodded, the tip of his tongue flicking after a smear of yogurt sauce at the corner of his mouth.

Hoo-ya.

~*~

Wally Vincent lived in an upstairs apartment in a house on Josef Campau Ave., smack dab in the middle of Hamtramck.

Hamtramck was a mile and a half square Polish enclave in the midst of Detroit, much like the Vatican was to Rome these days. Unlike the Vatican, Hamtramck did not have fine Renaissance architecture and great Italian food. Hamtramck's highpoints were a plethora of signs bearing such unpronounceables as Wojtyla and Czopek, and a sausage plant with a large neon fork sticking out over the road, kielbasa rampant.

The neighborhood was run down, borderline shabby. At the address, an elderly lady was doing yardwork, stooping and prising out dandelions with a long flathead screwdriver.

"Excuse me, we need to talk to Mr. Vincent."

The elderly lady squinted up at Mulder, adjusting the babushka tied around her head. She wore a Metallica "Ride the Lightning" concert t-shirt and had about three teeth, "Heh?!"

Mulder notched his voice louder to match her shout, "Mr. Vincent, is he at home?"

She dropped her head back to the task at hand, shooing him away with quick flicks of the screwdriver, "Round back, upstairs."

The backyard was paved in broken concrete, and a set of creaky wooden stairs led up the back of the house to a roofed porch. Mulder opened the screen door and knocked. In the distance, an ice-cream truck played 'Turkey in the Straw'.

After the second knock, the door opened a crack, "Yeah?"

"FBI, we're here to talk to Mr. Vincent."

A pause, then the door closed. A very soft, "shit," was barely audible. The door opened again to show a rather doughy young man in raggedy shorts and Pink Floyd tee shirt. It was terribly threadbare, and Scully could just discern that one of the two businessmen shaking hands was on fire. It was just like the poster in the Lone Gunmen's bathroom. "Wally's not here, can I help you?"

"Do you know when Mr. Vincent will be back?"

"He's in trouble, isn't he?"

"We just need to ask him a few questions."

"I'll bet." The young man let them into the apartment, which seemed to be where Guinness cans and porn went to die, "I'm Earl. I don't live here."

Scully could see why Earl would want to establish that right off the bat.

"Any idea when Wally's coming back?" Scully asked, actively ignoring the line of dildoes marching along in front of the paperbacks in the plywood bookcase in the living room. A few of the models were also popular in DC area adult novelty stores, ahem. As a rule Scully packed light, and she wouldn't touch anything in this apartment without evidence gloves, and yet, and yet. It must be getting bad if she was even starting to look at Mulder as a sex toy.

"He's working until eleven thirty tonight." Earl raked his hand through lanky brown hair and sighed, "I see you've noticed the prick collection."

Mulder waved a casual hand at a cheerfully nubby pink specimen. "Wally's a bit of a connoisseur I take it?"

Earl winced, "His latest girlfriend is into DVDA."

Mulder nodded, seemingly speechless.

Scully waited until they were back on I-75 before asking, "So Mulder,"

"Yeah, Scully?"

"What's DVDA?"

His lips pressed together, "Double."

"Double-?" she prompted.

"Yeah, double-double. It very handily explains why Mr. Vincent needed multiple sets of Jell-O Genitals."

It still took her a few seconds to parse, then "Ohhh, of course, double vaginal, double-"

"Yep."

"You're blushing."

"No I'm not."

Well now he was.

~*~ 

_"Little red corvette,_  
Baby you're much too fast,"  
-Prince

 

REM sleep seems to be an essential part of processing short term memories into long term storage, but whether dreaming is essential or simply a by-product is unknown...

Scully shifted from first to second, tight bare nipples grazing against the satin lining of her suit jacket. With a primal synchronization she orchestrated accelerator, clutch and gearshift until she was up to 96 mph, all the while hearing his breath behind her over the purr and growl of the engine. The hands that caressed her jawline and throat, that reached down over her shoulder to unbutton her jacket and roughly cup a breast were clothed in fine wool sleeves and unpowdered latex gloves. One hundred and twelve miles per hour.

The bare flesh of the wrist was exposed as one hand reached further down, a shock of hot silk against her stomach. The hand deftly undid the double catch of her dress pants and pushed the zipper down by means of invasion, slipping under and cupping her sex. One hundred and twenty two miles per hour.

That arm now pinned her back against the seat, a cool smooth finger worming easily into her wetness as the other hand lifted her chin back. Hot kisses trailed down, and the scent of his warm breath and his skin enveloped her, and without resistance she went where those precise little strokes were taking her, grasping his flexing forearm like an anchor. 

The needle was buried past one hundred and thirty.

~*~ 

_"Pink_  
Is like Red  
But not quite"  
-Aerosmith

 

Though asleep, she had been twisting in dissatisfaction, breath coming uneven and quick. Her hair was mussed and fanned out, caught in the picky grey upholstery of the headrest. The scullynaps on this trip had been particularly troublesome. The frequency. The postural restlessness.

The vocalizations.

Whimpers mainly.

At first he'd thought they were nightmares, repressed trauma from the Antarctic working its way out through dreams, even though she firmly denied recalling anything after the ambulance, her memory picking up again as he was shoving his socks onto her feet in the humid panic of the cold damp ship. It was becoming more difficult to ignore the voice  
that insisted otherwise, which pointed out that when Scully was frightened, she didn't whimper, she got stridently angry.

And she certainly didn't sigh. Not like she did just now. Not slowly like that, with a languorous tremble at the end. Her cheeks were flushed, and the wispy hairs at her temples were wet down with sweat despite the breeze from the air conditioner. She shifted, and began breathing in a normal sleep pattern.

Mulder was fascinated and disturbed. He immediately wanted to tell Frohike about it, to dispel some of the intimacy of witnessing something so private, so vulnerable, so goddamned spellbinding. He could suddenly claim a bit higher percentage of biblical knowledge, another wedge of the Trivial Pursuit pie of actually bedding the good doctor. Seen her naked? Check. Seen her come? Check. With turnabout being fair play, it was only a matter of time before she caught him roughing up the usual suspect.

He was having more and more difficulty filing these tidbits away, distributing these little firecrackers about his person and walking through life without setting them off. Their sly mutual attraction had always been, if not money in the bank, maybe money in a Pacific Rim mutual fund. Always there if things get truly dire, but sometimes a lot more or a lot less than what they'd each invested. How about that for distancing and rationalization? Equating lust and loyalty, trust and need with market fluctuations and laissez-faire capitalism.

They both snapped to attention at the trilling of her cell phone.

"Scully. Yes, sir," she neatened her hair as she listened, tugging her collar closed. "Well thank you, sir, I'm sure everyone is relieved that he could be stopped before he hurt someone." She glanced at Mulder. "We'd be glad to," her face still a little flushed, and she gave the shoulder belt an odd look as she stowed her phone back into her jacket. "That was SA Graver. A couple of agents from the Detroit office took Wally Vincent into custody an hour ago. His work locker was apparently a cornucopia of evidence. We just need to do a few background interviews and then write up our reports."

~*~

Their wrap-up assignment first took them back to the hobby store of all places. A dark-haired man in glasses stood behind the counter, his ratty blue overshirt unbuttoned to reveal a 'Bettie Page Brand Red Ball Gag' t-shirt. He had large square hands, but his gestures were spare and fluid as he explained the monkey trap principle, apparently in reference to Hat, "So then he reaches in to get his paycheck, but the hole is just big enough to get his hand in."

Kaydaug stopped sorting cards. "Yeah, so?"

"Well it's not big enough to pull his fist out, he has to let go of the paycheck."

Kaydaug's face lit up in a beatific baby smile and he jiggled with chuckling. "Ah, inbreeder's trick."

"Yep. He kept at it for twenty minutes before he saw us laughing through the window."

The blond man with the beret had a new pin that proclaimed 'Jesus Hates Me', and which seemed to underscore his melodramatic sadness. "I'm gonna miss that kid."

Kaydaug turned to the agents as they approached, "Hey, we're thinking of having a Customer Appreciation Weekend, you know, hot dogs and balloons for the kids, Jell-O desserts for one and all. What kind of fruit should we put in them, do you think?"

The store erupted with simultaneous suggestions;

"Bananas!"

"Vodka!"

The man in glasses added, "Little bottles of Scope."

"Careful, Alan, they're looking for a bomber, and pinning it on an asshole like you is probably pretty tempting."

Mulder seemed bent on ignoring Kaydaug, which involved peering into the birdcage as if Enlightenment itself waited inside. The parrot meowed at him.

Scully began the interview, "I can assure you that you are not under investigation, Mr. Forbino, but we would like to ask you a few questions. Is there someplace more private where we can talk?"

"Sure." Forbino led them into a back office.

Beret Man turned to Kaydaug with a head flick toward Mulder and began, "Okay, so morph together Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys, and the tall guitar guy from Blink 182,"

~*~

"Tell us about Wally Vincent."

"Ooosh," Forbino winced, cracking open his twenty ounce Mountain Dew. "He and I don't talk very much anymore."

Mulder's ears perked up, "And why is that?"

"Well," Forbino took a swig. "It started when I walked in on him anally fisting my girlfriend,"

It could only be described as an anxious titter, and Mulder seemed embarrassed that it came out of his own mouth. He cleared his throat. "Indeed?"

"Don't get me wrong, if anybody deserved it, it was her. One of those suburban Drama class morons who thinks that Gilbert & Sullivan is high art but won't soil herself with Monty Python."

"Ah."

"Exactly. So anyway, I didn't really mind, it saved me the annoyance of actually having to break up with her, but he got all pissed because I'd ruined what had been an all-afternoon project. 'Thanks a lot, Alan, she almost broke my wrist' and all that. Got all psycho on me. Last I heard he was living in some shithole in Wixom."

~*~

The next stop was a retired construction foreman in Wixom, a wizened charmer who seemed to have kept all his teeth by preserving them in tobacco juice and coffee.

"Wally. I'll tell you what, he was a strange bird, that's for sure. Good worker, but hard to talk to. And everyday he'd eat the same thing for lunch, four Spam sandwiches, half a strudel, and a diet Frosh. Had a little incident with a nailgun, heh-heh. Sucker got away from him and k-chunk! Right through the back of his own hand, heh-heh. I had to get the pliers and pull him free. He got a different job after that."

~*~

After that came Walled Lake and a very earnest, very pear-shaped apartment manager, "Well, when his lease came up for renewal we declined even though he was a clean and quiet tenant and usually paid his rent on time. The number of complaints we received about his Christmas decorations, even though we'd spoken with him several times and sent letters as well, it just wasn't worth it to go through that another year."

Scully felt like she was doing the leg work on one of those old-fashioned '60 Minutes' character assassination pieces, "What was wrong with his Christmas decorations?"

"Well, aside from having a manger scene consisting entirely of inflatable love toys--even the manger animals, mind you--his Christmas lights were multi-colored condoms filled with water, all tied on a string hanging there frozen off his balcony. Our older tenants thought he was a great guy, but the young people with families, you know."

~*~ 

And lastly a grad student's squalid office in Ann Arbor, "He's still alive?! I'd've thought for sure he'd've sucked a gun by now."

 

~*~

 _"You know how it is--_  
sometimes there's nothing to say  
other than you're working hard  
and trying to find some sleep here and there."  
\--Henry Rollins

 

REM sleep may have evolved separately from non-REM sleep; echidnas do not exhibit any REM-like stage of sleep, even though they, like all mammals, like to hunker down for a snooze...

"Subject is a Caucasian male, approximately 35 to 40 years of age, height six foot one half inch, weight," Scully checked the gauge, "One hundred eighty six pounds. Subject has brown hair, hazel eyes, and no tattoos. There is a keloid scar on the left front shoulder, over the deltoid, consistent with a fully healed gunshot wound. There is a corresponding  
scar on the dorsal side of the shoulder, both appear to be several years old,"

Langly leaned over the body, elbows and forearms digging into the insensate meat of the belly and sternum, "But enough about Mulder, what about you? What do *you* think of Mulder?"

Byers let the toe tag flutter back against the pale skin of the instep, and came slowly around the end of the table toward her. "Um, where should we begin?"

"Perhaps," Frohike bent his head solicitously, offering her an ergonomic desk chair, "Perhaps you should sit down?"

Byers leaned back against the table, ankles crossed and hands folded patiently while she took the seat. Just behind him, Scully could see that the body's genitals were covered by a pale pink linen napkin, folded restaurant style like a little sail.

"He was of the opinion," Byers indicated the body with a tilt of the head, "That the two of you were somehow linked, part of a group of souls that have clustered together throughout the last few incarnations,"

Frohike frowned while he poured himself a cup of coffee, "I always thought this dry-humping version of Buddhism was unbecoming, if not sacrilegious."

Scully shifted her right foot onto the wheel casing of the chair and crossed her left leg, "Recovery of memory through hypnosis is one of my favorite examples of the soft science of psychology."

"Shit, he must be dead--"

"Langly, watch your mouth around the lady."

"--he didn't roll over or anything when he heard that!"

Scully saw that Langly had not only donned goggles and gloves, but was zipping through the Y incision like a pro.

"Be that as it may," Byers continued, "We have a series of facts at our disposal, and we only need your input in order to arrange them into a satisfying whole."

Frohike held out a steaming mug of coffee, and Scully peeled off the two pairs of sweaty latex gloves before taking it, "Thank you." It was dark and sweet.

Langly called out, "Left lung!"

"Item one," Byers seemed to translate, "The fantasies."

"Let's be adults here," Frohike steadied the scale while Langly weighed the organ in question, "We've all had fantasies about you, and I'm sure you've returned the favor for a few of us."

Scully sipped at the coffee, "Agreed."

Frohike continued, "And very often nothing is meant by it. It's a reflex action, an exercise of libido and imagination stretching each other."

"Right lung!"

Byers cleared his throat, "Item two: the child."

"Watch it, Langly, you're getting it all over,"

"Sorry, he's getting kind of messy, that's all,"

Byers casually scooted a little farther toward the feet, "To have been forced into a reproductive relationship with the Mengeles of our age...Anyone could understand why you'd be a little leery of intimacy, a little untrusting of even those closest to you."

"The heart looks a little small, doesn't it?"

Frohike joined Langly in peering into the chest cavity, "No wonder he's always getting his ass kicked, if he's relying on a lawnmower engine to do a V8 job."

Scully peered over the table from her seat, rolling the warm mug between her palms, "Actually, you're probably used to seeing them on television, but for tv they use beef hearts. Human hearts are somewhat smaller."

"Oh."

"It looks kind of fragile."

Scully shrugged, "It doesn't have to do very much; just beat constantly for 70 to 100 years."

"Item three: the partnership. You can trust this man to save your life even to the detriment of his own. You can rely on his unswerving dedication to uncovering the extent of the corruption that endangers us all. You have never met anyone so passionate and, in his way, professional about the work."

Frohike jumped his feet back from the scale, avoiding the slop of blood that had missed the pan and was heading for his shoes. "But you can't let yourself lean on a guy who's likely to hike up his skirts and go running off to be trepanned when things get a little twisty."

Byers nodded, "Exactly. So what are we left with? The unanswered question of all platonic relationships is 'if/when'. Will one of you just walk away? When will the stakes be low enough for each of you to fully trust the other?"

Frohike added, "When will you be so emotionally strapped as to dig in the couch for the change that's been accumulating for years?"

Scully lifted her brows and pressed her lips together, shrugging as she raised the coffee mug to her mouth again.

"Oh and, by the way," Langly reached into the chest cavity and pulled out something purple which dangled dark and sodden from his finger. "You may have wondered what happened to these,"

Frohike confided a coy smirk over the rim of his mug.

"Give the doctor some credit," Byers took out his pocket kerchief and wiped at his fingers. "She already knew about that."

~*~

She startled awake and pinned him with a wide-eyed stare.

"Don't worry," he munched laconically on his honey roasted almonds. "We've only been in the air an hour, you can go back to sleep."

She continued to stare as if he were some lower primate sitting next to her on the plane, masturbating or harassing the flight attendant.

"What?"

Her only response was incredulity. He became defensive. 

"What? You want my nuts?"

 

 _"Our love, and I mean this in a nice way, is like taking Lassie to the_  
desert, removing her teeth with a hunting knife, and shooting her in  
the head with a gun that you and she built together."  
-Bruce McCollugh


End file.
